“Watch me!”
“But you’re being honored tonight, too. We all are.”
“You call this ‘honored’?”
“Please,” he said, seriously enough to stop me. “They need this. They haven’t had many victories lately, if any at all, and tonight—they need this.”
“What is ‘this’?”
He nodded at the open space between the circle of trees. “Watch.”
And a second later, I was. I was watching us, along with our two stalwart companions, bobbing along an underground river, only this one was made out of sparks. The great fire was throwing them up from below, and somehow the fey were turning them into a shimmering monochrome movie that glowed and flowed and gleamed in the air and had everyone’s rapt attention.
I crawled to the edge of the platform and stared down into a vortex of fire, painting radiant, moving pictures in midair. And felt myself relax again as awe overtook outrage. And I wasn’t alone.
All around us, people were gathering in the trees, crowding the platforms and sitting along the sturdier branches, seeking a better vantage point. There were geriatric grandmothers with long gray braids, children with bright black eyes and noses that had yet to fulfill their true potential, and solid, hairy men with rough hands and battle scars, draped with enough weapons to fight a war. Yet they were staring at the lights with just as much rapt fascination as the kids.
And no wonder. The movie in the air pretty much filled the whole open space, with 3-D graphics Hollywood might have envied. The long rush of river showered down from above on a cascade of sparks, the jagged points of the rocks were picked out in bursts of stars among the tree limbs, and the leaping Svarestri were painted in quick flashes of light amid it all, throwing even quicker bursts at the wildly bobbing heads below.
“This is how they tell stories?” I whispered.
“This is how they tell stories,” Pritkin agreed. “I used to hide in the trees and watch them—from a distance. They showed me remarkable things, battles long over, heroes long dead, great cities turned to dust. But not really gone. Not as long as their people remember them.”
“And now they’ll remember us?” It was almost overwhelming to think of being part of someone’s history, even in a small way. To be remembered . . . Stupidly, I felt my eyes get wet.
“Oh, they’ll remember us,” Pritkin said, sounding amused. “After a fashion.”
I looked back at him. “What does that mean?”
“That,” he said, as fire-me came speeding by the platform, the shower of sparks somehow managing to convey goggling eyes, flailing limbs, and a comically wide-open mouth silently screaming its head off.
I frowned at my unflattering doppelganger. “I thought you said we were being honored!”
“We are. But you know who decides the histories.”
“Who?”
“Whoever’s telling them!” He laughed and pulled me back, as fire-me looked around frantically, made an oh-shit face, and ducked under the fiery river—right before a spear burst into sparks that scattered almost as far as my real toes. I quickly pulled them back under the edge of the fur.
But the surrounding crowd didn’t seem to hold my cowardice against me. On the contrary, a new flagon of beer almost bopped me in the head a moment later, having been lowered from a platform above by a couple of cackling old women. And several bright-eyed kids were spying on us through the foliage off to the right, apparently finding us more interesting than the show.
I waved at them before realizing that they might not know what it meant. But then a small hand raised, with nails like dark-tipped talons. And slowly moved up and down as one waved back.
We grinned at each other, both feeling absurdly pleased for some reason. And Pritkin liberated the beer and refilled our mugs, because why the hell not? And the rock throwing and light fey cursing continued, with enthusiastic participation from the crowd.
Very enthusiastic, I thought, as the sparks rippled and swirled and genuine weapons were thrown at Svarestri heads.
I hoped someone had thought to cover the ox.
“I don’t remember this part taking so long,” I said after several more minutes.
“It didn’t. But the people here hate the Svarestri.”
“I thought it was the Green Fey who took over their lands.”
“It was,” Pritkin agreed. “But it was in response to the Svarestri doing as much to them, and seizing most of the fertile land on their northern border. The Svarestri lands are said to be rocky and cold, rich in minerals but not much else.”
“So they take what they need from others.”